“Hummus*” from “Dinner in an Instant”

*Hummus is how the Americans spell it, and thus how it’s spelled in this cookbook, since Melissa Clark is a New Yorker. Here in England, you know the place where the ENGLISH language was CREATED, we spell it Houmous. So can decide your own preferred spelling. But obviously it should be spelled houmous.

One of the things that a pressure cooker and instant pot excel at is the preparation of dried beans. Where usually it would take an overnight soak and some cooking to get 500 grams of dried chickpeas ready to eat, with a pressure cooker/instant pot, it took only 50 minutes total.

Because my pressure cooker was an impulse buy in France– as you do– my instruction manual only came with French instructions, which meant I remained clueless about how to hydrate beans. I did try to do some Internet research to figure it out, but I was always reluctant to try given that I still have a small fear that my pressure cooker will one day explode in my kitchen. This is purely down to the fact that one of the anthems of my childhood was, “Be careful of the pressure cooker!” rather than any tangible fear that the pressure cooker I bought in the 21st century would explode.

So I made Melissa Clark’s hummus/houmous. The table was in agreement that while this recipe was good, we thought the one from “Jerusalem” was better. However, the lovely Ottolenghi’s recipe requires some serious forward planning and requires far more time. You have to soak the beans overnight and then cook them before you start blending it with the tahini and other ingredients.

This version doesn’t take nearly so long, so it’s nice to have options. But more importantly, now I know how to make dried chickpeas into edible ones in under an hour.